It’s the million-dollar questions for parents of budding athletes around the country:

Would you let your child play football?

As the spotlight on the NFL’s health and safety risks grows brighter, the discussion on the topic has widened to include scientists, researchers and doctors. Mehmet Oz, better known as Dr. Oz, a heart surgeon and host of an eponymous television show, made the rounds on Friday at Radio Row in New York City to share his answer to the question. Oz joined Mark Kiszla, Peter Burns and Oren Lomena of The Press Box to talk about his son Oliver, potential changes to the game, and what parents can do to keep kids safe on and off the field.

“I had to face the decision this fall about whether my son would play football,” Oz said. “He’s 14. I let him play Pop Warner and youth football, but in high school he really began hitting people.”

Oz played football in high school and at Harvard in the early 1980s. The sport’s ability to form his character appealed to him then, and even more so now in his career as a surgeon.

“I wouldn’t be who I am today without football,” he said. “There’s no question about that in my mind. It taught me how to fail and recover. I learned how to make a calm center in a maelstrom of activity around me, which is what I do in surgery. In your moment of need you don’t want to be surrounded by intellectuals. In football, you train people to be men of action. I decided if that’s what (Oliver) wanted to do, I would not take away from him that opportunity.”

Good Monday evening/Tuesday morning, Denver Broncos fans. We’ve been hard at work planning coverage for Super Bowl XLVIII, so we’re a little later than normal. This is your Broncos Insider newsletter:

"PEYTON MANNING PROVED ONCE AGAIN — as if he had anything to prove — that he is one of the greats in NFL history," writes The Denver Post’s Patrick Saunders. "Champ Bailey finally is getting the trip of his lifetime. And Broncos fans, who screamed their voices raw, have another big party coming soon. … This will be the Broncos’ first trip to the Super Bowl since John Elway was named MVP of Super Bowl XXXIII, then hung up his jersey for good. That was 15 years ago." http://dpo.st/1ielu76

SEVENTH HEAVEN: In only a way Woody Paige can describe: "Super Bowl III for Peyton Manning, John Fox and Wes Welker. Super Bowl VI for Pat Bowlen and John Elway. Super Bowl I for Champ Bailey. As Winston Churchill would have declared, the Broncos “had their finest hour” Sunday." http://dpo.st/1dmYXgC

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO before planning travel and buying tickets to New York/New Jersey, from The Post’s business desk and Kristen Leigh Painter: "Total sales of airline tickets to the New York area from Denver International Airport spiked 90 percent on Sunday night compared with the previous Sunday, according to the online travel agency Orbitz." Hotel prices are highest in Jersey City and Union City, both near MetLife Stadium: http://dpo.st/1jsdg9f

Former Denver Broncos safety Hamza Abdullah, who played with the Broncos from 2005 to 2008, railed against the NFL, NFL Players Association, the NFL combine and commissioner Roger Goodell on his Twitter feed on Thursday, saying — among other things — that major hits he took in 2007 against the Tennessee Titans and Kansas City Chiefs while in Denver were misdiagnosed.

“Every player understood the risks of playing football, and we did it, and would do it over again!” Abdullah said on Twitter (warning: NSFW), before deleting that and many other messages laced with anger and profanity. “We just thought (and) assumed we would be taken care of after we were done.

“The reason players cover their injuries up, is because the contracts aren’t guaranteed.”

Denver Post sports columnist Mark Kiszla and radio hosts Peter Burns and Oren Lomena break down Von Miller’s press conference with the media just hours before he was suspended for six games.

Kiszla says that Miller’s talk of true teammates and fans supporting him — instead of the media — is disingenuous because the NFL and Roger Goodell suspended him, not the media. Kiszla expects that Miller felt he was going to either get away free or face, at worst, a four-game suspension. But he ended up with six games.

In 2010, Detroit Lions president Tom Lewand was suspended 30 days and fined $100,000 by the NFL for violating the league’s personal conduct policy after he pled guilty to a driving while impaired charge stemming from an incident when he swerved lanes and was found to have a blood-alcohol content of .21.

Stan Kroenke, left, with his son, Josh Kroenke during a shootaround with the Nuggets before a playoff game with the Golden State Warriors. (John Leyba, The Denver Post)

In seeking upgrades to its NFL home, the Edward Jones Dome, the St. Louis Rams asked their local government for just about everything, including a retractable roof. The estimated cost to fulfill the Rams’ wish list came to $700 million.

The local government, more specifically the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission, informed the Rams on Friday it would not be funding such a proposal.

“Everybody’s on the same page,” Jeff Rainford, chief of staff for St. Louis mayor Francis Slay, told the Associated Press. “It was a no-brainer. There was nobody in St. Louis who thought that the Rams proposal was a good idea, other than the Rams.”

There is nothing Roger Goodell can do now. His commissioner legacy is forever stained.

This replacement-official fiasco doesn’t trump all the good he has done as commissioner. But that much-ballyhooed, personal-conduct policy Goodell so famously enforced will now have negative company in the history books.

Hopefully Roger Goodell wasn’t planning on getting a meal at Brother Jimmy’s BBQ restaurant next time he’s in Miami.

Three NFL linebackers, including Denver’s own D.J. Williams, have made it clear Goodell isn’t welcome.

Williams, New Orleans’ Jonathan Vilma and Carolina’s Jon Beason recently opened the new restaurant, a branch of the New York City barbecue joint, and even more recently, signs have have appeared in the shop’s windows declaring Goodell as persona non grata inside.

Once the regular season starts in September, D.J. Williams won’t be allowed at Dove Valley, won’t be able to work out in the team’s weight room, attend meetings with Broncos coaches or practice with his teammates.

Those are the rules that go along with Williams’ six-game suspension for violating the league’s banned substance policy.

But for now, Williams remains part of the Broncos’ 90-man preseason roster. He missed two practices this week to attend his trial on drunk driving charges (he was convicted of DWAI – a lesser alcohol-related offense), but otherwise has been at every practice.

He even traveled to Chicago with the team last week, though he did not suit up and did not play.

That brings me to Saturday night. Will Williams see the field against Seattle?

We already knew that Brian Dawkins was among the NFL’s most respected players. But just how much current and former players, as well as media folks nationwide, respect the now former Broncos safety became clear today after Dawkins announced his retirement after 16 years. He played his first 13 years in Philadelphia, and has been a Bronco since 2009.

Here’s a sampling of posts from Twitter today after Dawkins’ announcement:

With great pomp and circumstance in a Brooklyn film studio, with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on hand as well, the folks at Nike unveiled the NFL’s new uniforms Tuesday with players from all 32 teams sporting the new jerseys.

Broncos cornerback Champ Bailey made the trip and sported his new orange home No. 24 jersey. Here’s another look at the uniform:

Palm Beach, Fla. — Here at The Breakers, a palatial resort off the Atlantic Ocean where a glass of house cabernet is $10.65, NFL owners, executives and coaches just went in to hear commissioner Roger Goodell’s state of the league address.

Broncos front office boss John Elway walked in with his former coach and current Washington Redskins coach Mike Shanahan. The mentor and the protege were talking about Elway’s first front-office coup, Peyton Manning.

“People have no idea how much time the guy puts in,” Shanahan said Manning. “You get an opportunity to get a guy like this once in a lifetime. They got it done.”

“I think it would have been hard for anybody to take me out of that game,” Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow said today.

It’s not far-fetched to believe. The Broncos were two weeks away from reaching the Super Bowl, losing just three weeks ago in a second-round playoff game to the New England Patriots. The Patriots’ opponent in Super Bowl XLVI, the New York Giants, were 7-7 with two regular-season games remaining while the Broncos were once 8-5.

Tebow is still a bit tender from rib, chest and shoulder injuries suffered in that playoff game against the Patriots.

“I’m continuing to heal,” he said, as he walked between Radio Row spots here. “But I’m getting there. I’m working certain body parts and working pretty hard. I’ll be able to do more hopefully next week.”

Chase Heavener, a friend of the Tebow family who directed the documentary, told me last week that the DVD will include a blooper reel as well as extended footage from draft day 2010, including more scenes of what happened early in draft day and the aftermath of his selection by the Broncos late in the first round.

The original cut of the film ended as NFL commissioner Roger Goodell began to announce Denver’s pick, and then the screen went to black.

New York — Just talked to Broncos ticket boss Kirk Dyer and corporate sales/marketing guru Derek Thomas. They’re once again manning the Broncos’ Bat phones here for the NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall. Dyer is here for the ninth consecuitve year; Thomas is here for the eighth season.

First thing that struck them: How close the Broncos’ table is to the stage. Top picks get the best tables. Carolina has the No. 1 pick and the table right next to the stairs leading up to the stage. Next table over belongs to your Denver Broncos.

This is the first time the Broncos’ table has been so close to the stage. That’s because the No. 2 pick is the highest in team history.

Dyer and Thomas’ table has a pair of telephone headsets, a league-supplied glass jar of M&Ms and two bottles of Gatorade. You can’t get this information anywhere else.

James Owen’s phone rang Tuesday afternoon, and the name that popped up on his caller ID read “NFL.”

Owen’s immediate reaction was to panic.

Owen, who writes a fan blog called The South Stands and is active on Twitter under the handle “dasouthstands”, had recently sent an email to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to express his frustration about the lack of open discourse from the league and the NFL Players Association about the labor negotiations and the potential lockout, and Owen was worried that maybe he had written something that the folks in the NFL offices on Park Avenue hadn’t liked.

The gist of Owen’s email was that he felt both sides, the league and the union, were ignoring the fans. He certainly never expected a response.

I started off my Friday evening with some phenomenal green chile and ended up with some insights on the looming NFL labor feud.

Please, try to stay with me on this roundabout ride.

My wife, Nancy, and I finally got around to trying Mark Schlereth’s “Stinking Good” Green Chile. A container had been in my freezer for a couple of months, but I scrapped together some leftovers and made some burritos for dinner. I heated up Stink’s green chile and smothered the burritos with it.

This is how his blog begins:
“Well, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is at it again.

One day after the conclusion of the 2010 regular season, the Commish sent out an
email to some 5 million die-hard fans in which he said that a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) was close at hand.

For those of you lucky enough to be summoned from on high, congratulations! I
guess the rest of us common folk will have to settle for googling his proclamation.

There were three major themes to this piece of propaganda, I mean email.”

You get the idea and tone of the blog from that intro.

Schlereth — without apology — writes from the players’ perspective. He comes down hard on the NFL powers that be. If the current members of the NFLPA feel as strongly as Stink does, this labor crisis is going to get nasty.

You might not agree with everything Schlereth writes in his blog, but give him credit for speaking his mind with such candid force.

London, England _ A few newspaper writers from San Francisco and Denver had a roundtable discussion this morning with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

The league’s big issue is the 2011 season and whether it will be delayed by a work stoppage. I put it to the commish that after Broncos players met with union leader DeMaurice Smith last week, many became convinced there will be a lockout next year for two reasons: One, the owners hired Bob Batterman to be their chief negotiator. Batterman led NHL owners through the lockout that cancelled the 2004-05 season.

“”Bob Batterman is an outstanding labor attorney,” Goodell said. “”He has not only represented the NHL, he has represented many other organizations and reached successful conclusions without lockouts. We’re not going to be told who to be represented by.”

Yeah, but he’s been dubbed “”Lockout” Batterman.

“”They can call him anything they want, his intention is to get labor agreements that work for both sides,” Goodell said. “”And I think he has an incredibly successful record on that front.”

And two, players believe they will be locked out because the owners are well-funded for it. Owners worked it out so they collect the 2011 TV revenues regardless of whether the networks have games to televise.

ProFootballTalk.com has estimated the lockout fund at $4 billion.

“”Both sides are going to be prepared for all alternatives,” Goodell said. “”That’s what they should do. Anyone who enters into a negotiation and is not prepared will probably not be successful. I’m sure the players have been taking preparations. They’ve been talking about how they’ve been doing that for some period of time. And the owners will be doing the same.”

While the players consider Batterman and the lockout fund as strong indicators the 2011 season is in jeopardy, management’s hot spot is the union’s position to decertify, which gives the players the right to have the collective bargaining agreement to be resolved in court _ which was Major League Baseball returned to the field in 1995 following its lengthy strike that cancelled the completion of the 1994 season, and first 18 games of 1995.

“”We’ve made the point that revenue will start decreasing _ it probably already has in certain categories,” Goodell said. “”And as that revenue decreases, it’s less money to be able to negotiate over. So it will be harder to get a labor agreement at some point.
“”Plus I think, and you’re seeing it already with the decertification, is they will pursue litigation strategies. And I’ve often said this is going to be about collective bargaining.”

All 32 NFL teams will undergo a new training program that focuses on proper conduct in the workplace, the league announced Friday. The ruling is in response to an incident last week in the New York Jets locker room in which a female reporter was allegedly subject to verbal harassment by players.

The NFL investigated and determined that there was “unprofessional conduct” around TV Azteca reporter Ines Sainz, who was credentialed by the team to interview quarterback Mark Sanchez. The league also determined that the Jets organization “acted promptly to correct the situation,” according to a statement from the NFL.

Jets owner Woody Johnson will underwrite the new training program for all 32 teams, which will also be given to rookies in 2011.

Mike Klis has been with The Denver Post since 1998, after working 13 years with the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph. Major League Baseball was Klis' initial passion. He started covering the Colorado Rockies after Coors Field was approved for construction in August 1990.

Nicki Jhabvala is the Sports Digital News Editor for The Denver Post. Before arriving in Denver, she spent five years at Sports Illustrated working primarily as its online NBA editor, and she was most recently the overnight home page editor at the New York Times. She has reported regularly on the Broncos since joining the staff.

A published author and award-winning journalist, Benjamin Hochman is a sports columnist for The Denver Post. He previously worked on the staff of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, winners of two Pulitzer Prizes for their Hurricane Katrina coverage.